


Live to Tell

by observerswildflowers (therealdocmountfitchett)



Category: Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 19:37:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11191998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therealdocmountfitchett/pseuds/observerswildflowers
Summary: "Heather's mom called my mom. They're gonna bring her out of the coma this week".





	Live to Tell

**Author's Note:**

> An AU in which Chandler survives. This is based mostly on the musical (except for Chandler, who has aspects of the movie and the musical character in her I guess?).

I Winter 1989  
“Ronnie, are you okay? You’re limping”.  
A crease appeared between Martha’s eyebrows (or where the brows would be, hidden by glasses frames). She appraised Veronica, looking up and down with motherly concern.  
Veronica turned away a little out of instinct. There were speckles of half-dry blood on her white blouse, concentrated near the left hip. Whose blood it was, she couldn’t be certain.  
She drew her blazer around her tighter, and smiled. “It’s nothing. I walked into a desk and opened an old scab”.  
Martha’s frown deepened for an instant. She swallowed back _must’ve been some sharp desk _; then, gazed back up and returned Veronica’s smile. “Sure. Make sure you put a Band-Aid on it, and some bruise cream or you’ll be black and blue tomorrow”.__  
Veronica’s shiny grin faded away. Around them students flooded in a heavy stream, jostling on their way out of the door. Evacuation policy, Principal Gowan said. Could be a dangerous gas leak. Somebody had tripped the fire alarm just to make the point even crystal-clearer.  
Nobody noticed them. Where they stood, just inside the entrance to the girls’ bathroom, nobody noticed. Duke was gone; she’d stormed away and melted into the convoy moving down the hallway. Heather McNamara folded her arms, which were covered in goosebumps. A winter draught blew in from the open entrances. She still wore her cheer uniform.  
Veronica placed a hand on Martha’s shoulder and squeezed it, and brushed a lock of hair fallen from the latter’s ponytail behind her ear.  
“Thank you”. She paused. “Seriously. I don’t deserve it”.  
Martha chuckled. “Deserve what, silly?”  
Veronica’s sombre expression didn’t crack, and for a moment Martha thought she saw what looked like the start of crying. “You. I don’t deserve you. Or you, Heather”.  
Heather’s face grew concerned. She outstretched a hand and took one of Veronica’s in hers, squeezing it tight. “You’re a good friend, Ronnie. You saved my life, remember?”  
Gently smiling (not with her lips), Martha brushed Veronica’s other hand, and her voice was quiet. “C’mon. What do you say we go home and get movie night going early? I’ll call my mom and tell her to pick up some Jiffy Pop”.  
Veronica nearly smiled again. She sniffed hard and blinked. “Sure. Heather, you in?”  
Heather nodded, breaking out in a beam. “I’ll bring Twinkies”.  
“Then it’s settled,” Martha said. “If we wait around a little while my Dad said he’d give me a ride home after the rally anyway, you guys can hop in with us if you want”.  
“That sounds awesome”. Veronica did smile now. “I’ve… there’s just something I gotta do first. I’ll be back in a sec”.  
She left them waiting in the doorway for the crowds to pass. It’d be like looking for the lip gloss you wanted in Chandler’s makeup bag trying to find anybody in this, but Miss Pauline Fleming’s dress sense made her harder to miss than most. Pushing her way out of the doors and into the cool sunshine, the people shoulder-to-shoulder with her dispersed into the fresh abundance of space, and Veronica wished suddenly she’d thought to bring a warmer jacket. The student parking lot heaved with kids waiting for the buses to finish refuelling.  
Miss Fleming was standing a step or two away from the other teachers. In her mouth was a roll-up cigarette, and she patted her pockets in search of the chipped plastic rainbow lighter with Frisco ’68 on the side that she always carried around.  
Veronica grimaced. Her heartbeat sped up nauseatingly. “Uh, Miss Fleming? Can… can I talk to you for a minute?” 

____

II Winter 2001  
The afternoon was frozen solid, the grass buried beneath a carpeting of stiff frost crystals and feeble greyed snow. Semi-melted, where people had been treading on the main pathway through the centre of the graveyard it’d been reduced to muddy slush. It wasn’t quite snowing. Little flecks of white drifted on the gusts of wind that came every now and then. The cold was bitter, like a pinch. Her nose and cheeks flushed red.  
She held a bunch of blue dahlias wrapped in a cellophane cone, and her hands were gloved. They sold dahlias throughout the years at the flower nursery on the outskirts of town. There was a hothouse there, full of exotic plant species and that kind of thing that she didn’t really understand. She always got blue dahlias. They made her think of him. As far as she could remember they’d never discussed flowers together, but he had mentioned the Black Dahlia once, and ever since she’d associated the dahlia with JD. He didn’t deserve some crappy dollar bin condolence lilies from Walmart. She thought he would’ve kinda dug her getting flowers that held symbolism of him; all that deep stuff that they were into when they were seventeen.  
His grave was near the back of the graveyard, in the second to last row of headstones before the back wall. The local history of Sherwood’s one church had been drilled into her since elementary school; built in 1897 when the town was founded, and the graveyard had been there since then. Some of the names on the stones she came to recognise each time she saw them. These were the old graves, creeping with ivy and moss.  
JD’s was a newer stone, unlike the others barely worn. Jason Dean, 1971-1989. She wondered if people who had never heard of Jason Dean (probably most of them) did the math and worked out he died aged seventeen, or thereabouts, then felt the second-hand sadness she felt when she looked at sad graves and wondered how he died. The last time she came to put flowers on his grave was the last time she was in Sherwood. Nine months? However long ago it was, the previous bunch of blue dahlias were long gone without a trace.  
Veronica unwrapped the flowers and bent down, setting them at the foot of the grave. An elastic band around the stems kept them all together in a bouquet. They leaned upright against his headstone, and from a distance the splash of blue stood out on the grey.  
Despite her leather gloves, the cold still made its way through to the skin of her hands. Veronica put them back into her pockets and stood there, looking down at the grave. A blackbird warbled somewhere in the trees. It was Christmas Day in two days’ time. Mom had dinner cooking and the bags of extra food she’d sent her daughter to get were waiting on the back seat of Veronica’s car. The roast chicken would be rock-hard by the time she returned.  
She smiled briefly, and it was a smile that was more sad than cheerful.  
“Merry Christmas, jerk”. The three words came out very quietly, murmured under her breath as though trying not to wake someone.  
A long few moments of silence passed before Veronica became aware that she didn’t have the graveyard to herself anymore. She looked up from the letters on the stone; there was a person walking down the farther path from the patch of cherry blossom trees beyond the old wall, where there were clusters of more recent graves. The person was female, bundled in a dark green trench coat and a white scarf tied right up beneath the chin. Strands of blackish hair blew free from her ponytail in the wind. Veronica couldn’t see her face. Yet, the way she walked was so familiar. It took a matter of seconds for her to know who the person was. She watched, waiting to see if Heather Duke would see her.  
She did. Duke looked across at the other figure in the graveyard. There was a flickering beat of confusion, then recognition. She raised a hand in an instinctive wave. Veronica returned it. Heather began to approach, coming closer and weaving between graves in realtor’s kitten heels unsuitable for the weather.  
Veronica chuckled sardonically when they were close enough to speak without raising voices. “Fancy seeing you here”.  
Duke rolled her eyes. “The Christmas spirit is really alive in this place, right?”  
“Positively jumping”. Both of them laughed, and she couldn’t suppress the warm smile of greeting that broke out. “Happy holidays, Heather”.  
“Happy holidays, Ronnie. I can’t believe we haven’t seen each other around yet. How long’ve you been home?”  
“Only got here yesterday; I was gonna call you today, actually. We’re on my parents’ sofa bed until Boxing Day”.  
Duke laughed again. “I bet Heather’s ecstatic”.  
“Oh, she’s overjoyed, as per usual”.  
Veronica noticed that Duke was also carrying an empty cellophane flower wrapper. The latter’s father died last spring. It was a nice funeral. “You- you here to see your Dad?” she asked, a tad gingerly, her tone shifting towards tenderness.  
Duke nodded. “Yup. My mom doesn’t get out much in this weather, so I came to wish the old man a merry Christmas”. She swallowed hard and didn’t speak for a beat or two. Veronica watched her glance down to see which grave she was visiting, and saw the change in expression, and Heather’s small eye pop. More time in silence passed. Heather met her gaze again after this.  
“You mind if I ask you a question?”  
Veronica shrugged. “Sure”.  
“It’s kinda personal”.  
“That’s fine. We’re friends, y’know”.  
Heather deliberated. “Do… well, do you… miss him?”  
For a split second it might've been 1989.  
“No,” she replied, kindly but unhesitant, shaking her head. “I guess… I just feel for him. He hasn’t got anyone else. If I don’t put flowers on his grave, nobody will”.  
“No, I get that”. Duke nodded in acknowledgement. She switched on a smile instead. “Seeing as you’re in town, we should meet up before Christmas. I’d have given your gift in person if I knew you were coming home but I already mailed it”.  
“Same here, don’t worry about it. I’ll tell Heather I saw you and we can arrange something”.  
“Definitely”. She rolled back her sleeve to check her wristwatch. “Look, I’d stay longer but I’m technically on the clock and I’ve got to meet with some clients in one of the nice houses in Sherwood Heights in fifteen minutes. How about I call you later?”  
Veronica grinned. “Sounds good. I guess I’ll see you round, and tell Heather I say hi”.  
“I will. See you round,” said Duke, grinning back as she turned to leave. She’d gone scarcely a few paces, treading carefully along the path, and Veronica called her back as an afterthought struck.  
“Hey, Heather?”  
“Yeah?”  
“Would you do me a favour? Just… if you see Heather, don’t tell her I was here”.

**Author's Note:**

> I've got a rough outline for this fic and I want to keep updating, though probably not in the next week because of exams. This is my first time writing for Heathers :)) tell me if you spot any mistakes because this isn't beta-ed lmao.  
> Hmu on tumblr @angeldefright bc everyone loves friends, I lurk a LOT but I don't bite


End file.
